2012 – The year of the HD re-releases

HD makeovers are not as common as they should be in my opinion, it’s a market that publishers are only just starting to push more towards, mostly because they are running low and cash and need a cheap idea.  I do not blame them for doing this either, if developers and publishers can turn a profit on the side of their big releases with HD remakes, but are good enough to add in support for achievements/trophies, new textures, higher frame rates, online features, improved audio and still in most cases charge less than a full retail release, then I’m all for it, it’s a big win for us consumers.

When a new video format comes out, movie studios fall over themselves to convert their old movies to the new one, VHS to DVD, DVD to Blu-Ray, Digital Download and so on, so it’s no surprise that the games market is trying to catch up with this business model.

With so many great games being given the chance to shine again, we have plenty to play to keep us busy between some of this year’s other big releases.  Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on FFX-HD, it’s the only one I haven’t completed from the Final Fantasy series and one of the most promising HD re-releases this year.  Still no word on FF-VII though, but that is rumour ground well-trodden already.

I’m a firm believer that HD remakes allow you to see the game how it was intended, at least for the ones that the developers have put a little extra effort into, anyone who has chucked a PS2 game into a certain well known PS2 emulator on a fairly beefy PC can see just how amazing the detail was in those games, in years to come the same will be said about this generations games.

So many titles, if not ALL of this generations AAA titles run sub-par on current console hardware, with sub 720p resolutions that are up-scaled, screen tearing due to no v-sync, poor anti-aliasing, frame rate of 30fps and below and occasional slowdown, come round to ps4 and Xbox 720 (obviously not what it will be called, but you know what I mean) and we will have this gens games re-released in higher resolutions, even if it’s just true 1080p, 60fps, better AA, V-Sync, all of which are something mid to high end PC gamers enjoy already, we will see the full potential of this generations classics, but as with a lot of consoles games, they just aren’t available on pc, so for now, we have to wait.